Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Saturday Aug 19. West Yellowstone MT - Red Lodge MT 330 km
Yellowstone was fantastic! As we had spent about 5 hours for the first 60 km, we realized that we have to speed up a bit in order to make it to Red Lodge in decent time. We had booked the motel in the morning through the internet so we did not have to worry about finding a place to sleep.
We saw buffalos and a bunch of other wildlife as well.
And the obligatory Old Faithful.
Plus countless mountains and rocks.
And we saw fabulous waterfalls and canyons.
It appeared as if Jouko and myself were also a kind of a tourist attraction with our full riding gear on. I was surprised to see that practically none of the riders that we saw had much of any decent riding gear on! The majority were even without helmets. Well, long live the liberty and freedom! Somebody must have invented a spare parts store for skulls, I have not found one, yet...
On our way to Red Lodge we climbed pretty high and we really needed some more clothing under the Venting Machines.
Pretty close to Red Lodge we saw a light yellow LT coming into opposite diection. That was #2. The first one (the same color) we saw at Glacier Park.
We saw buffalos and a bunch of other wildlife as well.
And the obligatory Old Faithful.
Plus countless mountains and rocks.
And we saw fabulous waterfalls and canyons.
It appeared as if Jouko and myself were also a kind of a tourist attraction with our full riding gear on. I was surprised to see that practically none of the riders that we saw had much of any decent riding gear on! The majority were even without helmets. Well, long live the liberty and freedom! Somebody must have invented a spare parts store for skulls, I have not found one, yet...
On our way to Red Lodge we climbed pretty high and we really needed some more clothing under the Venting Machines.
Pretty close to Red Lodge we saw a light yellow LT coming into opposite diection. That was #2. The first one (the same color) we saw at Glacier Park.
Friday Aug 18. Browning MT - West Yellowstone MT 630 km
This time we got started at 07:00 without breakfast and instead of taking US 89 from Browning we tok the Heart Butte rd which goes through the Indian reservation. It was really a magnificient ride in many ways. First of all the Montana sunrise...Then the roa was nice and winding and totally empty - Ok we met three cars during the 40 miles. And the last 15 miles was unpaved! This was a surprise but no worries, we managed fine on our 400 kg "SuperEnduro" bikes. Doing 140 - 150 km/h was no problem but the few corners that the road had we had to take it easy...
We stopped at Choteau MT for breakfast.
Montana is called the "Big Sky Country". No wonder...
The weather was just perfect all day long.
In the afternoon we finally got to West Yellowstone and bookes ourselves to a Best Western motel. As there was a gas station with car wash facilities we washed the bikes and changed the H7 headlight bulb for Jouko's bike.Thu Aug 17th Radium Hot Springs BC - Browning MT
We got up at 06:00 and packed and had breakfast at a local gas station and we were on the road only at 08:30. We gotta improve our starting speed the next mornings...
Anyway, here is a beautiful view to Lake Windemere on a cool morning. Temperature was about 11 C and as our Venting Machines give not much warming effect we had our rain gear on top and that blocked the wind.
We were at the US border in Roosville MT at noon time and with all the paperwork and waiting for the previous customers to get cleared it took us an hour to get through. To my disappointment nobody was interested in my driver's licence! And I paid 100 USD to get it shipped...
We continued to West Glacier where we had lunch.
After the lunch we headed for the Going to the Sun - highway. Of course for us flat land people the scenery was breath taking. We had to park at almost every possible point and admire the scenery and take pics.
Jouko on the road.
After riding about 500 km we ended up in a small Montana town called Browning. It is next to the Blackfeet Indian reservation and we stayed at a local motel which looked much worse from the outside than inside.
Anyway, here is a beautiful view to Lake Windemere on a cool morning. Temperature was about 11 C and as our Venting Machines give not much warming effect we had our rain gear on top and that blocked the wind.
We were at the US border in Roosville MT at noon time and with all the paperwork and waiting for the previous customers to get cleared it took us an hour to get through. To my disappointment nobody was interested in my driver's licence! And I paid 100 USD to get it shipped...
We continued to West Glacier where we had lunch.
After the lunch we headed for the Going to the Sun - highway. Of course for us flat land people the scenery was breath taking. We had to park at almost every possible point and admire the scenery and take pics.
Jouko on the road.
After riding about 500 km we ended up in a small Montana town called Browning. It is next to the Blackfeet Indian reservation and we stayed at a local motel which looked much worse from the outside than inside.
